Great Company Culture in a Remote Workplace | Episode 21

How do you build a culture when all of your people are scattered around the country? That is the core question this week. Gary and David share how they do it in their company along with the successes (and struggles).

There is also some talk about a crazy lady who raps and stole billions of dollars, homers, and cookies.

Enjoy!

Here are the links to all mentioned articles/videos in this episode:
The Verge - The words and rhymes of alleged Bitcoin launderer Razzlekhan
Fast Company - The hidden reason people don’t want to go back to the office
Fast Company - Robot swarm! When internet cookies chase you IRL

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David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

David: 0:00

The Texas homecoming mum. Okay. It is so ridiculous, but it is. So it's such a great tradition. These mums are the size of your head, okay? They're not real flowers are all fake. Okay, and they're covered in streamers that go down to your feet. So imagine homecoming dance day, you go to school and the girls are wearing a mum that literally covers half their body. And it's got whistles and bells and craziness just attached to it.

Gary: 0:29

So it's like the crazy Kentucky Derby hats but for high school girls in Texas.

David: 0:34

I have not seen the craziness. Oh, you're talking? Yes. Yes, yes, similar, but really tacky, like way worse. You have to do this. And they still do it to this day, because I have friends who still in Texas and their kids are going through it now. And yeah, and you were these huge, ridiculous, and the more ridiculous, the better. And like, Texas is weird. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the biz dev podcast podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, and I'm joined as always by Gary Voight.

Gary: 1:07

How's it going, man? Hello. It's going good, how you doing? Good, busy doing good.

David: 1:12

Busy day, I have a crazy crazy day to day. And so I am an all dressed up which of course no one can see. Because I have client meetings and stuff. It's weird, because I'm not used to going out to the house or the office. I just sit in my T shirts all day. And this time, I actually got to go meet someone. So it's gonna be exciting.

Gary: 1:30

So you might actually have to endure like business travel traffic.

David: 1:35

I actually have to commute. Yeah, it's weird. It's gonna be a weird day. But I'm excited because they're a good client. And they're fun to hang out with. And they get they're building a new building. So I get to take a tour of it, which I always love. I'm a big, I love construction and stuff. Cool. So I've been reading around the news. And I'm gonna pick my favorite article of the week. Have you heard of arousal calm?

Gary: 1:59

Just today? I just Yeah, I Well, I knew that this is related to the bit Bitcoin hacking heist thing or whatever. But finding out more about her and like her history and what she does. I became so intrigued and then so disgusted at the same time. It's just a really weird feeling to see this because you're like, is this real? Or is it is she? Is she actually trying to do this? And when I say this, I mean, her rap career is trying or she just making fun of it? Like I can't tell.

David: 2:35

So let me back up. Let me put the history here. So

Gary: 2:38

we definitely have to put this link in the show notes though. Yeah,

David: 2:41

yeah, if you have not seen these stories, dude, you owe it to yourself, because it is some craziness. And I

Gary: 2:47

gotta hand it to the verge for writing this article. Because the way it's written, it's like an interaction between two people discussing this topic, and it's hilarious.

David: 2:56

What, okay, so back in 2016, a wallet was hacked, for all intents purposes. And they stole fat. There was a number of 1000s of bitcoins though a lot of Bitcoins. And at the time, it was worth something like 70,000 bucks. But now, that same amount, was is worth billions, literally billions of dollars. And they finally caught this person is $3.6 billion. What they've recovered, the total amount they stole was worth now four and a half billion dollars, which is mind blowing, just for so many reasons. I mean, it's like you're wrapping up all the crypto articles all at once. But, and normally, we wouldn't care about that to the point where we were talking about on our podcast, but where it gets fascinating. Is they traced the hacker I guess that's the right word for it. The theme to a couple, a man and a woman. And the woman has a history of writing and producing and publishing is that the right word? I don't even know what

Gary: 4:08

your anything anything you can deem as like the most cringe worthy content you see on the internet. She's made it she's done it and she's tried to monopolize it as a career. And it's like she's done. She's tried to book herself, like speaking gigs at like, you know, def cons and stuff about social engineering and how to hack your way into this and hacky way into that, because she'll just take any single weird trend that she thinks she can monetize. And she goes full ham, and it's so bad.

David: 4:42

Is she so she's she's a rapper, and you can go to her website. Don't

Gary: 4:46

say that. Don't say that. What that's an insult anybody who is Ryan three words, you know, in a phrase,

David: 4:52

that's fair. I mean, it's like if she rapped roses are red right, but worse. Goat is Razzle conduct calm I mean She's She is. She's legit. And though in the way that she has made something, she's out her videos are now being removed because it's a she's getting so much press but yeah, she is exactly I mean, this is so going to be a Netflix movie. Oh, it has to so now the dude from what I understand is actually the guy who did most of the stealing. His name is Ilya Lichtenstein, which is awesome. Sounds like James Thurman, but

Gary: 5:29

Dutch couple, is that correct?

David: 5:31

I think that's right. But she her name is Heather Morgan, and she is her, his wife and she was very much involved, but he was the like mastermind. But she is still Oh, she is just a hoot. So she wrapped she called us up the crocodile of Wallstreet.

Gary: 5:48

Yeah, there's like so much I want to say but I don't want to say because it's kind of spoiler, if you say too much about this,

David: 5:55

so Oh, it is oh, it is just fascinating. This is like, to me, it's like, what it reminds me of is like some rich kid, Dad's rich, mom's rich, and the kid has been inherited too much money and they don't know what to do with it. And so they start making music. You know, that's something that a lot of them seemed and this is what everyone reminds me of. Remember, Paris Hilton came out with a song. Yeah, years and years ago. It's like she got bored. And with all of her millions, and she didn't have a job,

Gary: 6:23

I think I think she made like a whole album.

David: 6:25

She did, she made a whole album. And it was bad. And everyone panned it and but it was Poppy, syrupy worthlessness. This one was this. I don't even know how you explain this.

Gary: 6:35

Now, I'm just gonna take a guess here. And I'm assuming the Paris Hilton thing came about because there was probably someone who thought because of her popularity and fame, that it would just make a bunch of money didn't really care about the music

David: 6:48

or whatever. And I bet it did. I bet she sold a ton of copies. Right? That's a weird thing. It's it's like if once you get to a certain level of fame, it doesn't matter what you do. You just get it now this woman thinks she has the right amount of fame.

Gary: 7:01

That's what I was gonna say. This is the exact opposite where she thinks she's got Paris Hilton level of fame and influence, but is making the absolute worst garbage out there possible. And I hope I hope she is not making money from this stuff. I don't want that. She is no because in order to do what she does, you have to have some weird psychological, like, switch or button in your brain that says everything I do is awesome. And, you know, no one can tell me otherwise. She has to think she's really good at this. There's no way she would just keep going. Of course, what

David: 7:39

people looked at always think they're better than they actually are. Right? I mean, that's what

Gary: 7:42

I mean. This is this is this is only in level. Yeah.

David: 7:46

Oh, yeah. Crazy. What? She gets credit for confidence. How about that? She gets credit for her confidence, because she thinks she's really really good. Anyway. Oh, you owe it to yourself to look her up. And there's gonna be a link in show notes. Oh, my gosh, if you if you want to kill a few brain cells and laugh a little bit, yeah, it's good stuff.

Gary: 8:08

Friday, fun day. Lunchtime. But just be careful. You know. Don't don't have the volume up too high.

David: 8:16

I still heart Yeah, you want your ears My bleep

Gary: 8:24

another news article that we were actually going to talk about last week. But I think we ran out of time. I wanted to bring it back up this week, because we're going to talk about something related to it. But there's an article through Fast Company about the hidden reason people don't want to go back to the office. And it's different because it's an article about working remote and how, you know, everybody's pretty much doing it or wants to do it or has to do it. But they took a weird spin on it and made it seem like it's going to be a bad thing for businesses. And after you read the article, it kind of sounds like it comes from the perspective of maybe a CEO or a manager or whatever, in a company that doesn't want his people working remote because he can't keep tabs on him. And I say that because in this article, The Wall Street Journal, they published an article showing that some of these what they're calling quote, unquote homers, people that work from home are that they have a secret and they're working two jobs remotely. So they're working one full time job and another full time job without either job knowing that they have the second job. And apparently there is a an assistant principal in Washington DC that got caught being an assistant principal for Washington DC and for a school in Rhode Island. Nobody noticed any kind of decline in his performance. No one thought that he was doing a bad job at all. Parents and students loved him. But apparently the DC board of ethics caught wind of this and now besides being You know, fire, they're looking to sue them. So then this whole article kind of goes into the idea of what else is being hidden from bosses and who else is scamming the company by working two jobs? And I mean, I'm sure you have an opinion about this. But the first thing I thought of was, instead of immediately assuming that people are doing this nefariously, maybe the company should ask themselves, why do they need to have two jobs?

David: 10:26

Man, you came at this from a totally different angle. That is, yeah, interesting. So you came at this from a negative thing. And I came at this as it was very enlightening to me. Because as a business owner, I'm all especially a when I'm managing and leading developers in a row, serious remote developers at that, who are notorious for having side hustles this thing spoke very true to me. Totally. Yeah, I have a fear of this. We have a rule just for information, we have a rule that if you are working for big pixel, you are not allowed to develop on the side. For anything besides like friends and family, you can't have side hustles. And do client work and stuff like that on the side?

Gary: 11:16

Now, this is for contractors. This is for this is our

David: 11:19

employees. Yeah, yes, our employees. So the reason for that is simple. I know that when you start getting excited about your side work, it soon becomes your real work, and you bail. And I believe you should work for your employer, as long as you're going to work for your employer, and they should be able to, they should have your time and creativity working for them. So I came at this from a very different, different angle, which is interesting. That means great that we have different opinions.

Gary: 11:46

I think it's just the way the article was presented and written, that kind of struck a nerve for me, because I totally agree with you that if you have an employee, and it's a remote atmosphere, a remote team, yeah, you're depending on them to do their job for you and not trusting them, you know, doing two jobs at the same time one takes away from the other back and forth. Understandable, you know, but at the same time, the way this article was written was like, How dare they or you can't keep tabs on them, you can't see what they're doing. So they're obviously scamming you. Let's end remote work. Like, that's just kind of the way I saw

David: 12:23

it. I like and we'll get into this in a bit. But I'm a big fan of remote work. And I like trusting my people and letting them do a good job and assuming give them the benefit of the doubt that they are doing a good job and that they're working hard. But it is always in the back of I think every business owners mind that this dude or dudette is run in a side gig. Yeah, I mean, I know guys flat out who they haven't they know they're in a slow period at the real full time job. This is before they were remote like this is in the office, right? But they're, they're having a slow period, maybe it's bug hunting season, whatever, you're waiting on the next big push. And you've got a couple of weeks. And this guy would literally build entire websites for other people while he was at his office

Gary: 13:16

in full view of everyone else around them just well, they were

David: 13:19

in cubes and stuff. So it looks like he's coding because he is coding, right? I mean, yeah. So it's, yeah, I've seen that in person. And so that's always in the back of my head that are they doing what they say they're doing. Now I trust also

Gary: 13:32

been articles about guys, like it guys are engineers and software developers that are in a company that it's a slow period, or it's a task that they don't feel is, you know, worthy of their expertise and time. And they'll actually find that task out through like Upwork or Fiverr, or whatever, and then take full credit when it's done. Okay,

David: 13:51

I have a story on that. I will leave names out it is not me. But I have a story. I knew a guy who worked for my own company. This is before big pixel. And he was hired on to be a developer, senior developer. And he had finagle on if that's the right word, he had figured out a way or convinced them convinced the boss that they shouldn't hire him as a W two. They should hire him as a corp to Corp transaction. Okay, so they were contracting him even though he single time Corp to Corp like business operation to operate. Okay, okay. Yeah. So it's not it's he wasn't an individual being hired. It was two corporations working together

Gary: 14:36

as a service instead of a contract that employee Correct. He was

David: 14:39

a vendor, even though he's a full time employee. I mean, he was just like the rest of us who were all W twos. And he, we found out later that he had hired an Indian development company to do his work. He was being paid well enough. same stories are real, these always 100% real. And here's how I know this for a fact, because he left the company. And I had to take over me and another guy had to take over his code. And so we look at his code and no joke. There were two different coding styles in in the code, like very clearly two different people had worked on this. And neither of them spoke English natively. Because you could tell by their comments,

Gary: 15:25

I was just gonna ask if the comments section. Oh, it was so cool. Or if they were so

David: 15:30

open, they were good coders don't get me wrong. It wasn't like it was badly done.

Gary: 15:32

No, I'm just saying for you to step in, you understand what what the sections are set off? Or what the comments were,

David: 15:39

it was like whiplash, because you would be bouncing between different parts of his code and was obviously two different people. There's like having conversations with different guys the same time. Anyway, so that's legit, but that and I've always give that guy credit because man, that is ballsy. Like, I don't know how he pulls that off, because it clients always ask you to get in the weeds and ask how do you did this? And what did you think was the right thing? And if you didn't write it, how do you answer that? I don't know. But yeah, true story. True, sir.

Gary: 16:07

The last paragraph in this article, I think, is what set me off. So I just, I'll let everybody read the angry Gary, not angry. Just Gary Smith, what's the word I'm looking for the framing, the framing of this content came across as as more native towards your own work. The last paragraph says remote work has allowed Homer's to moonlight. Homer's is, I guess, a derogatory term now. And then it says, because of all of those informal office dynamics, citizenship, sociability, information, exchange, bonding, and others, blah, blah, blah. And it says, that's all been stripped away by the late rising and sweatpants and polo shirts. So maybe remote work is here to stay. But despite all of its collateral damage, it has emboldened some to disengage from their primary employers, and sometimes without any remorse. Tell me that's not a negative connotation?

David: 17:01

For sure. No, this guy absolutely is not a fan. Yeah, he's

Gary: 17:05

remote work. And you

David: 17:06

know, and so is Tim Cook and all of them. I mean, I, I don't have a problem with people who don't like remote work, but I think it should be on a case by case basis. But yeah, no, I get you. I get you. I like the term Homer. I don't know that. Is that derogatory, I kind of think it's fun.

Gary: 17:21

I just immediately think of The Simpsons, and it makes me smile. So

David: 17:24

sure. Yeah. I don't see I don't see a problem with homework. Anyway, I'd love to get everybody else's opinion on that. If you have one. Shoot us an email. But I think it's time to move on. Do you have any other comments you would like to add? Gary Smash?

Gary: 17:43

No, no.

David: 17:51

So I want to move to our meat potatoes, which is related, because we're gonna talk about remote work again. But we're gonna talk about how we do it because we get a lot of questions. Just by people I talked to, obviously, they're not emailing us, right? Because no one emailed

Gary: 18:08

us. If they were though, they could. And it's Hello, good. Big pixel. dotnet.

David: 18:13

Oh, nicely done. Very nice. Yeah. But I mean, I get asked questions in other ways. And so one of the things I was asking is, how do I run a remote company? Because it's, you know, we've been doing it for a long time now, five years. And people before COVID? Everyone thought I was nuts. First off, because how can you do it? How do you? Why would you do it? Who thinks this is a good idea? And in all honesty, and I think I've said this before, it originally was out of necessity. Yeah, we were really struggling to find good developers locally, that had the random stacks that our clients needed, in hiring them quickly. So we turned to contractors initially, and then we started hiring,

Gary: 19:00

especially given the location that you're in that area of North Carolina, the triangle of tech, or whatever. I mean, no,

David: 19:07

I do not want to say for any that there is not good developers here, there are tons of them. The problem is

Gary: 19:12

they're all They're all hired. Yeah, that's the problem.

David: 19:15

And unless you're going to hire on a recruiting firm who's going to cost 15 to$20,000, to find this guy, or girl, you, you're not going to find these people because we're all working. There's like a 1% unemployment rate of developers in our area. I'm sure that's in most areas now. And I've always joked that that 1% of people who just really don't want to work. I mean, they just don't want to, because there's a job even if you're incompetent, right now, there's a job,

Gary: 19:41

or it's just the statistical margin of error. That's, yeah, that to

David: 19:45

me is it's, it's true for every agency in the area and I know several of the owners and stuff around the area that they can't find help because they're all hired and especially now, there's article after article after article about how ridiculously hard it is to hire developers because of this great recession or sorry, great resignation, or whatever they call it. It's a great something. And so that's how,

Gary: 20:14

yeah, how have you been able to do it for so long?

David: 20:17

So, well, trial and error, I will tell you. I mean, when we started, we didn't know what we were doing. We we tried all sorts of things, what we have come down to I'll cut to the chase. And what we've learned, what we've come down to is, you need to, you need to work hard on your culture all the time, because you, by definition, you don't have one, you

Gary: 20:42

have remote, you have to remind the people that you're working with remotely, that you're still working together, and you still have to have some sort of camaraderie, some sort of,

David: 20:51

so we are working hard to have regular meetings where everyone attends. Because we're still small company. I mean, there's nine of us, it's not like it's a huge company. So that's not a big deal. But making sure like it used to be like one of the things we've learned the hard way is my guys would be all in silos, Guy A would be on this project, and one would be on that project. And you know, and they didn't talk to each other. And that creates, they don't like that. Because developers, whether they say it or not are pack animals, they like to work in packs, they work better in packs, a lot of them say that I'm a lone wolf, I don't need any but that's not true. I don't care who you are, I will die on that hill, I'll die on that hill, but they don't like it. And in when and when they're all They're the only developer on a project. Then that project blows up. They have to fix it. Right? That's hard. I'm on vacation. I'm calling you. I don't want to call you. Right. I mean, the clients down the only one guy can fix it, I have to call you. I hate that. So one of the things we've implemented, is making sure everybody is paired up on everything. No one should be alone anymore. That's been a huge help for us. We've been doing that the last six months or so I guess it's not that's a new change. But no one should be working alone on a project. And that's including project managers. That's including testers we we grew up.

Gary: 22:19

That's not just devs. Like every project, every client has a group of people. It's a

David: 22:24

team effort now, and we've leaned hard and not to wax philosophic. But we changed our logo a few months ago. And we changed it because team became the core of what we do. And and we did that because we we knew that that was going to create better culture as a remote workforce. Because we've embraced the fact that we're mode, we're fine with that. That's not changing. And we want to we want to support that as much as you can. So how do we do that? We do that with Slack, primarily. It doesn't have to be slack, we've tried all of them. Slack is the one that works best for us. Uh, we use teams for a little while. I did not like it. I know that some people prefer it. That's fine. It's free. I think that's fine.

Gary: 23:10

Slack just being cross platform and mobile friendly. I think slack is probably the easiest way to communicate. And you can

David: 23:17

I mean, I think teams can be used everywhere. It's just a different philosophy

Gary: 23:21

radically. Yeah, it just sucks.

David: 23:24

Well, if you were in developer land, you have a lot of distrust of Windows anything. I don't know why I

Gary: 23:32

used to have to use teams at my last corporate gig. And since designers were on Macs and suits, what was your CS? There's a lot of weird privacy things that come up. And it's just not it's not as fluid as it's not like really took Yes, like just kind of made. Those interactions seem a bit more conversational and easy. So you're not hesitant to like, Alright, got to post this to the group. What do I got to add? How do I attach this? Whose permissions am I given? You know what I mean? Yeah, it's really

David: 24:02

corporate feeling. It's very corporate feeling. But I mean, I'm not trying to dog on on teams, teams has its place. And if you're already drinking the Microsoft Office Kool Aid, you get it for free. So it's definitely worth trying. But we use Slack. We like the immediacy, immediacy of it. And that's how we communicate all day, every day, everybody's on Slack. And it's actually a requirement that during work hours, you have to be on Slack. I need to be able to get ahold of you. And that's how we do it. So that is Cornerstone number one every company I think even non remote companies should have a slack like thing. Because what if you don't have something like Slack, you're going to be living in a billion emails. And that is really, really hard to keep track of. Yeah, I

Gary: 24:48

recommend interoffice communications. Yeah, that is printers. Teams would work well in a bigger company that are all Windows based, like you were saying,

David: 24:57

but as long as you have some form of way of chatting with each other, that's not email. Because email is great and has a point. But it's it's a hard communication tool. So slack is a big one. The other one that that really keeps us going is we have to have a management tool, a task management tool, we use clickup. We've embraced that in married it. company wide. And it is been great for us I'm not shilling click up, there's a million of them Asana. I'm trying to use

Gary: 25:27

like notion,

David: 25:28

notion there's a Kanban, one's own

Gary: 25:30

data alone, there's Yeah, project management tools and scheduling tools are everywhere. So

David: 25:36

and but you need to embrace one, if you're going to embrace a remote thing. And this is true, I think, even if remote to you means you have one remote contractor or something that is doing something critical for your business, right? It's not, you don't have to be 100% remote to use these strategies, that's important to keep in mind. Because even if your guys are out in the field a lot these strategies, you're still kind of a hybrid, remote, right.

Gary: 26:02

Or even if you have some people that work from home certain days of the week, and then work in the office, other days, like that's still tech, which is becoming more and more common now, which is the hybrid model that you were talking

David: 26:12

about. So, so having a management tool that says, Joe is doing this, and Phil is doing that, and this is their due date, and I can and they update it, and I know where they are all the time, super critical to doing remote work just absolutely critical. So that's how we do work. Work. Right. But again, I think it's I'm gonna loop back to the culture thing real quick. Because I don't think you can overdo that. If you are managing people remotely. And we're still learning this, please don't get me wrong. I am not the big expert here. But we are trying very very hard like I I dabble in things, there are really cool services and stuff like you could have snacks delivered to your your people, which is really fun. I think that one's called snack magic. Great name. We did that and tried that out. The response was kind of lukewarm. Hey, thanks for the snacks. I was it. Oh, you having regular we have a Christmas party where everyone gets together and we just chat. It's no work. We just chat. We want to do that more often. Those kinds of things again, build the culture take the time. Because if you don't, then there's no loyalty and you're going to lose people, especially in this environment.

Gary: 27:27

Yeah, even if it sounds kind of cringe to be like, Oh, everybody on Zoom, everybody with the camera on for an all hands meeting? You know, when you see that written somewhere, you're like, Oh, great. But when it actually does happen and your team gets along with each other? Yeah, it's really cool. Actually, it's it's really silly little bonding thing that actually does help and has a little bit of an impact.

David: 27:50

But what and that's a key point, right there is when you're having company meetings, insist upon cameras. And here's the thing, this has to come from the top down. If if you if this is true for management tool, Slack, whatever, if the CEO leader, whatever is not on board, because sometimes that's a common thing. If they're older, especially, I'm not using any of that fangled stuff, then no one will write because the only way I can communicate to my boss is through email or something like that. That means that slack adoption goes way down. That means that task adoption, whatever your software is goes way down. It's got to be company wide, or just it will fail. And same with the video thing. If your boss comes on you, the founder, you turn your video on nuts. And I promise everyone else will turn it on do

Gary: 28:41

they'll give you a good enough excuse not to

David: 28:43

yeah, sometimes people are just out and about for whatever reason they have to be fine.

Gary: 28:47

Filming most of the meetings. Yeah, everybody, even if they put on some creepy space virtual background, at least you could still see their face.

David: 28:53

Oh, man, those are. Those are That's good stuff that people have some really great. My favorite one. We had a guy. I don't know how he put well I know how he pulled it off. But it was genius. He recorded a video of his own office behind him. So it was his real office. And then about a minute or two in. He had himself walked by and waved to the camera and walk out of the camera. So you're talking to him and then the background. He shows up again, man, the first time you did that, man, it was awesome.

Gary: 29:22

Yeah, there's a lot of the like the ones were in the background. It'll have the person you're talking to like come and drop a cup of coffee off and then pretend like oh, sorry, didn't mean to be on camera and rush out real quick. And the person on Zoom will like know, when that's going to happen. It'll kind of turn back and look as if like, Hey, man, get out of here. Like it's gone pretty viral. A lot of people are doing it, but those are definitely entertaining.

David: 29:44

They're very good. And it's a good way to bring some personality in the office. I don't want to belabor the point, but I think remote work is here to stay in some capacity. The hybrid model I think we have some in the office some not. I don't think that's going away. For next decade, I mean, eventually it'll change again. But

Gary: 30:04

so you would say for strategies of running a real company, communication, culture, and camaraderie are those be three points that you want to make sure that drive home,

David: 30:16

you have to communicate, you have to stay organized, and you have to engage your people how you do that, I don't care. But if you don't do all three of those things, your remote company will purism. But read around the internet, I read a lot of stuff for startups and, and entrepreneurship and stuff all over the internet. And one of the trends I'm seeing pretty regularly right now is a lot of young people starting their own business. And a lot of this is because of what we've been talking about. Tired of my job, the great resignation, all this stuff, great. But they're starting companies, which I love. And they're all in a super big hurry. Right? It's I'm 25 years old. And I want to run a business right now. Or I'm being offered a job, but I really want to run my own business, should I take the job or not? This I see this over and over and over again, posted on forums and, and Reddit and, and blog posts. And it's the same, you feel this. And I love it, because youth in the passion of youth is fabulous. But I want to speak on a bit of patience. Because I think these guys and gals are really hung up on it has to be now or it's never, if I don't do it now, it's never going to happen. If I don't do it now and succeed. Now, I'm not going to be able to retire or I'm not going to be able to fill in the blank. And I just wanted to talk about the just do a collective breathe, y'all. You're young, you're in a wonderful time of life. Find a place, here's what I would recommend. If you're 25 years old, and you're debating whether to take the job, whatever the job is, as long as it's in the industry you want to be in, like one guy I was reading about. He was offered a job at Google to do something he loved. What is his field. It wasn't he wasn't a developer, though, but or start his own business in that field. I'm like dude, and I was at Google. In early 20s, I can't tell you exactly. But he was you take the job. And my advice to him was take the job, dude, find someone at Google, who knows how to do what you want to do. And just sit at their feet for a couple of years and soak it up like a sponge. And you will leave Google in a few years one, you'll have Google on your resume. But you'll leave there with so much more knowledge than you have. Right now.

Gary: 32:59

It's so much more expertise, and you're not going to be struggling to pay rent or whatever.

David: 33:05

Yeah, I mean, if you're doing a right and you get a good job, you're getting a good salary, you save a big chunk of that know that you're my goal here is to get this business running. It's to just stake my claim and do my own thing. That's wonderful. Prepare for that don't rush into that. It takes time you need to have a you know, your first year of business is going to suck. I don't care who you are, unless you're just super blessed. You're going to have a rougher shoot. Because no one knows about you. No one cares about you. You have no clients, you have no nothing. It's going to be rough. So you got to have backup plans, you've got to have money set aside. And if you rush into that, three months in, you're going to be destitute. And you're going to do either something stupid, like quit, or something like take on a client, you have no business taking on or end up doing the work of our client that isn't even in the industry you want, right? I had a friend who had a joke, when he was starting out, I'll wash your car, if you'll pay my bill rate. He'll do anything. And no, no, you got to get past that phase.

Gary: 34:16

So if you're young, and you do, let's say for instance, the story you were talking about, take that job at Google for a year or two or whatever. You said, the first year of business is going to be rough, you're not gonna have any clients, no one's gonna know who you are, at least if you are learning and working in that field, there's a good chance that you can gain some sort of traction, whether it's through networking with people or just becoming a voice in that industry and having that experience on your back where you can start to build up, you know yourself whether it's through social media or just interacting in that industry with other people. So may do leave and you start your business. It won't be as you know, screaming into a desert as you would think there'd be people who know about you

David: 34:59

know, I want to caution there, because that loops back to kind of what we were talking about earlier, when you choose to work for your employer, you should work for your employer, or I need to put the business idea, in my opinion, you need to put the business idea down, you learn, get good at your industry get good at that stuff. But don't be figuring out how to, oh, I'm gonna steal this client, or no, I'm gonna you know what I'm saying, or I'm gonna build up my, my name, so that I can go and start my company that will all come,

Gary: 35:33

let me elaborate on what I was thinking. Because I know in the design industry, okay, say you're a designer, you're either you went to this design school, or you didn't, and you're getting your first job as a designer, you know, at a pretty big place. Ultimately, you want to either freelance or start your own agency, that's fine. But you're going to work at a place with a good reputation. And if you're a good designer, you're working there for a few years, there's a good chance here works probably going to get seen whether it's through social media, or even, you know, awards or whatever, anything that's going to put your name out there. And of course, you're going to be working for that company doing work for that company, say, a year down the road, two years down the road, you're like, Hey, guys, everybody who knows you on social media now, because your work and you're like, I'm starting my own business now. And I'm doing this. Those two years of you building up your name, no detriment to the company at all, but at least sure you have a place now and design where people have seen your work. They're like, Oh, yeah, that guy used to sign for, you know, Google, they did this. I remember that. Yeah, good at this. I'm not sure if that's the type of design reputation I'm trying. I don't think it's unique to design. That's why I said like, you'd build up your reputation and kind of set your place in that industry.

David: 36:42

Because design. Not to belabor the point or to nitpick, I guess it's design is meekly visible,

Gary: 36:50

right? Yeah. Almost like there is an author or creator. It's far more visible than a developer or somebody who's writing

David: 36:58

code if I was mowing lawns, right. And I go, and I mean, there's a silly example.

Gary: 37:04

But But yeah, though, we're talking about tech or,

David: 37:07

you know, any any kind of work, I think is important when we're obviously at Tech. But let's say I want to start my own lawn mowing company, and I want to mow lawns, I want to be a landscape architect, and I want to take care and work for a big lawn company. I'm not gonna be able to build up a reputation in two years and say, look at all my lawns, right? That's right, that's, that I'm not gonna be able to do but or even as a developer, you're not going to be able to say, you can say it, but no one knows. No, necessarily, please. But let's

Gary: 37:38

say you are that lawn care guy. And you say, Well, I used to, you know, I used to work with this company. If that's a good company with a good reputation, people are like, okay, so you know what you're doing? Yeah, you

David: 37:46

know what you're doing? Yeah, for sure. For sure. I'm always a big fan, dad. That's why Google is. I mean, if you say your names on your resume, for sure. Yeah, just love it. It's really weird how that works. But anyway, I think that's, I think that was just something I keep noticing over and over again, man, if you're young, and you're listening to this, and you have this great idea, man, I love it. Do it. But don't be in a hurry for it. Take your time do it right. Because if you rush it and it fails, you're gonna think something like you you're not good enough for it or you can't run a business. That's not true.

Gary: 38:19

Don't take it personal plan for it and strategy. Let's talk

David: 38:27

about this talk about cookies. You won't go about cookies. I love cookies. I like chocolate chip cookies. And I know robot grazings. Oh, robot cookies. Oh, you know, I saw a t shirt. I love T shirts. And it says oatmeal raisin cookies are the reason I have trust issues. Yeah.

Gary: 38:47

I like oatmeal raisin cookies. But if there's some hidden nuts in there that you're not expecting bad times. No. Yeah, you know, not a fan. Same thing with brownies. If you if you're looking at a brownie and you're like, oh, chocolate brownie, you bite in and there's like a walnut that you didn't know was there. That ruins a brownie man.

David: 39:04

You're speaking to me, man. I love all that's in my brownies. That's so funny. Okay,

Gary: 39:09

I don't not like them. I just don't like them hidden. You don't want to let me know that there's wallets? Yeah, one sneaky

David: 39:16

walnut. Ooh, that's like a band name. Smooth Jazz, sneaky wall. Anyway. You're not talking about that? What kind of cookies are you talking about?

Gary: 39:23

You send me a link to an article about robot cookies. I did. I'll let you explain it a

David: 39:29

little bit. Okay. So I love this article. So much. This is this will be in the show notes. So this artist, this is in French. He's French. I can't say his name. I wish I could but it's very French and I would absolutely butcher it. But he had this idea he wanted to show kids when they go to a website and they accept all the cookies. What it really means and so what he did was he created a bunch of little robots that were sitting Cute. One looks like it's wearing a hula skirt. One looks like a little dragon. And

Gary: 40:06

yeah, one's got horns on it like a bowl. Yeah, you

David: 40:09

when you walk into the room, these kids, they accept all quote unquote. And these cookies start following them around everywhere they go all over this room. And it's showing them the reality of this is what a cookie does, it's follows you from one site to another, as you are using the internet, and I thought it was super creative, and very cute. Um, and I, we should just say they need to make those robots because they're really adorable. But I think it was a really good example. Because no one knows what they're doing. When they go to a website, it says cookies back,

Gary: 40:43

they just want to get it out of their way they want

David: 40:45

it gone. And, and I don't want to go into a big cookie discussion. But it just drives me nuts is bad UX, in general user experience, the GDPR, which is where all this came from, which was a European law. That said you need to tell everybody that you're tracking them.

Gary: 41:01

Yeah, it's it's a broader right to their privacy that they're able to see. But

David: 41:05

no one understands any of that stuff. And so what it turned into is you go to whatever website you get the we do you accept our cookies. And you, you say yes, on accident most of the time. And now you're being followed, and you don't even want to be because if you actually understood what they were saying you would absolutely say no. But no one understands what they're saying. I've always hated that. So I thought that this was a very cute way to show what you're actually

Gary: 41:27

doing. I'm sure this will turn into like a commercial somehow, or maybe just a small little piece online. But it is it is pretty funny.

David: 41:36

It should, it should because I think it's very educational. I mean, I know this is meant for kids.

Gary: 41:40

But there's some like real tech in these things. They're in an area where there's like AI that knows what phone to follow, and how many cookies to like, approach them in certain areas. Like it's yeah, it's

David: 41:51

very well done. Okay, so we didn't have any questions go. Well, but big, big surprise there. But we're getting we're getting better. I'm trying to spread the word a little bit more. And if you are listening to this, Hey, give us a review. on Apple podcasts. I'll just choose Apple for now. You can do it on any of them. But Apple is the big boy in the world. Give us a review. We'd love to hear we have a few out there already. But that helps a lot. If the more reviews we get the more apple will pay attention to us and show us when people search for us and whatnot. Also tell your friends that's always good, too. All right, Gary, you got anything else you want to add this week, man?

Gary: 42:31

No, man, it's been pretty good week. So I'm happy with the robot cookies.

David: 42:36

Sweet. Are y'all Well, thank you so much. We will talk to you next week.